


we're talking about a revolution, son

by oncewewerezombies



Series: Pretty (blue) hoofbeast cavalcade [3]
Category: Homestuck
Genre: Alternate Universe - No Sburb/Sgrub Sessions, Diplomacy, Gen, IN SPACE!, Prequel, Worldbuilding, meetings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-20
Updated: 2017-05-20
Packaged: 2018-11-02 17:44:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,013
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10949547
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/oncewewerezombies/pseuds/oncewewerezombies
Summary: Cake Empress meets Heiress. An offer of cahoots is made.Alternatively: The first signing of accords between the Human Federated Alliance and the Alternian Rebellion.





	we're talking about a revolution, son

This is it.

Two weeks ago you received a message from the grey hellraisers who'd laid a scarred path through Terra's furthest colonies, laying waste like an interstellar reincarnation of the Eurocrusaders of pre-space Earth that you'd read about in history books. They were something you hadn't expected, most species you'd encountered on your journey further into the depths of the universe had been eager to trade, to talk. Space was so big and so lonely. Intelligence was a rare enough gift that it was worth taking the time to converse, to at least attempt communication before coming out all guns blazing, full steam ahead and brace the cannons for crossfire. 

But the _Alternians_. Trolls. They just didn't operate like that, all they seemed to want was to enslave everyone they came across, gut the planet of everything that could be of possible value to leave only a scarred out husk. You'd come across a few of their slave planets and whatever human ship came in contact with them seemed to start fomenting rebellion immediately in the underclass, this usually being whatever natives had originally called the planet their own before the trolls had come in and started smashing everything to buggery and tarnation. You've found the husks too, with nothing left to them, only pockmarks and empty atmo. Worse than moons. Empty and dead, where moons are merely inanimate. There is quite a significant difference, even if you can't describe it. And all of the Alternians quite happy to continue their world-killing, slave-taking agenda.

But apparently not everyone's as flipping happy with the status quo of the Alternian Empire as the prisoners your forces had taken had seemed to be.

You'd all thought at first that the different trolls were some sort of separate but similar species, considering that they all bled out in different colours. All the colours of the spectrum, as far as you've been able to tell, with a few gaps in chromatic blending. Deep green, you haven't come across that, and anything really in reds and pinks other than rust, a variety of shades covering an expansive deep red like burgundi wine. 

There is this interesting little thing with the trolls; their eyes reflect their blood. 

Mom-Londe was still currently having conniptions and entire litters of kittens in her space station turned laboratory. Not unusual considering some of the races and things they'd come across in the stars, but the trolls seemed so human-like, right until they weren't. Strange inside, alien despite the human seeming casing with its charcoal hues. It wasn't like they went out of their way to kill prisoners, but some of them did off themselves in custody (or force your soldiers to kill them), and more often than not active forces grabbed a ship with corpses. Flash-frozen bodies were made for experimentation, and dissection, and honestly, you don't want to think about it more than that. Not until someone could tell you how to fix the alien bodies, the way you could already help with human ones. But when were you going to need to know how to heal a troll? Right now they were your enemy, but hopefully this is about to change.

You had wondered why there were such gaps in your spectrum.

You're staring at two of your missing links of the rainbow right now.

Scarlet as a fucking cardinal, and just about as pink as one of Roxy's shirts reflects back in you in their eyes, grey skin and those sharp angular teeth not hidden by their black lips, always looking like nugoth teens wearing lipstick to you. The fact that all of them had black hair - barely worth mentioning! The mismatched and outrageous variety of horns is intriguing; you have tall and curved, and short and nubby-rounded here right now in front of you. You've been told that Pinky is the Heiress to the Alternian Empire...and also somehow the leader of the rebellion. Intriguing power dynamics, and there's a story here that you hope you're going to get to the bottom of. You should have made sure Rose was up here with you, her grip on the social dynamics of alien societies is often nothing short of chilling but she's ready to whisper in your ear if you misstep. That will do for the moment. The small mound of your subdermal implant is hidden under your short, curled hair, wired into the bones of your ear, so soft and tender as they are, and you learned how to subvocalise like a champ way back when it had been first put in. You haven't met an alien yet that could pick it up.

One day, you're sure you will. The universe is vast and full of complexity, and that's what makes it so gosh darn _exciting_.

"Hello," you venture, sure that something so simple couldn't possibly be the wrong thing to say. You don't smile or bare your teeth, in case it gets taken as a threat display. Alternians are very aggressive! And that is not the vibe you are aiming for here. The smaller, shorter one with the nubbed horns growls anyway. It's not cute, it's mildly terrifying. You are very aware suddenly that you are standing here, human, armour-less, in reaching distance of two trolls. They are quite the plucky hand to hand fighters, and they have certain advantages over your own soft-skinned, clawless and fangless sort. Pushing that all back down, you move on to the more important parts of this meeting. "I'm Jane Crocker, Grand Admiral of the Human Federated Alliance. I understand you wished to come to an...understanding?"

They talk to themselves in clicks and hisses, and you would swear that you can feel something of it rippling through your bones. The pink one with the aquatic characteristics _beams_ at you as Rose murmurs into your ear, telling you the basic gist of it. You're going to have to add a new language to your repertoire, if this keeps up. You're damn certain that your voicebox isn't made for that kind of clicking, but for goodness' sake, you're not going to have allies that you can't understand. Luckily, these things have always come easy to you and the ones you trust the most. Deliberate engineering by your mutual guardians, some sort of gift written into your very DNA? Possibly. But why worry about a gift like that. It's not like you're worried about anything else they could have squeezed in here, hidden in your genetic markings. If it was anything too terrible it would have come out by now. Besides, your grandmother wouldn't have been the grand architect of the science side of things - and thank goodness. She had just bankrolled the operation. But enough about you and your nebulous genetic history and possible reasons for your very existence - you have a diplomatic meeting to conduct here.

You are really hoping that this is going to turn into an alliance. Those bioweapons? Amazing! You want you some of that. For the Alliance, of course.

You _don't_ want any of whatever it is that sees dead trolls hung up in fuchsia coloured tentacles in the centre of their ships.

Some things are just unclean.

"Cahoots," she says in answer to your question, and the next sound she makes you would almost call human. She laughs. It's a hoarse, rasping kind of laughter, but you'd just about classify it as a giggle if the two of you had shared similar vocal chords and cultural background. You haven't heard anything as human from an alien before in your laugh; you're not sure that any other species you've met really gets 'humour'. Her grin is wide and she flashes a mouthful of fangs at you that wouldn't be out of place on a deep sea angler. Thin and pointed as needles, a few pointing out at odd angles but nothing that took it over the edge of her thin lips. Slotting neatly into place when she closed her mouth. "We, _I_ am offer to make of cahoots. Me and you."

Is the bad grammar and odd accent a ploy to make herself seem more harmless, to make herself seem stupid? You're sure, if she's rebelling against her own Empire and has sought out to offer so much to an enemy of her kind, she's not stupid. Not if, as you think, she could win. With humans fighting alongside her - or at least not fighting against her, you think she thinks she'll tip the scales against the Empress. It's a very delicious feeling down the back of your neck, and you think you want to ride your hunch all the way to the end.

"And what does an offer of...cahoots...mean, between you and I?" you ask, a little bemused as she grins and her compatriot scowls at you. Maybe he's some kind of security officer (or her? Or they? You shouldn't judge, they could be something else entirely but you think that trolls are bi-gendered, similar to humans. At least from what you've all managed to pick up, but he's coding masculine for you right now). Lord, what an overbite. It's deadly. How would you avoid biting your own mouth, bleeding constantly from catching your lip when you brought your teeth together? You thought you and your cousins had some stellar dental issues; trolls take it to a whole nother level.

She shrugs, fluid, and muscles moving like no human's ever would. Something in the back of your mind screams _wrong_ \- no matter how many aliens you meet, there's always just that edge. It's worse when they're almost human, so much worse. You wonder how much the way you move, the sounds you make, freak them out. Honestly, considering everything that the Alternians have put you through, put all of you through, you kind of hope you give them the fucking heeby jeebies just breathing and standing still. They'd deserve it, no matter how difficult it made interstellar diplomacy.

"Co-operation. Uh." She looks sideways at her compatriot and click-chirps at him like a tiny _adorable_ chainsaw, and the scowl on him only deepens. The eyeroll she delivers at his growl-chrr back as the...earfins on the side of her face flare widely in a big fan shape of near-translucent skin and stiff tines is _magnificent_. It is the most 'no, duh' expression you have ever seen on someone not of your own species, specifically adolescent at that. Reminds you of Roxy, in the most suddenly homey way. "Mischief? Most friendly, conspiratorial seeming cordiality. Against the...Empress, you, me, our forces together."

You like her. 

That's probably not a good thing, that you like her but you do. 

"On what terms?" You can't help being suspicious. It's not as though Alternians have really endeared themselves to your federation. If you accept this offer, you need something to show for it. Your government won't accept it otherwise; you have a heck of a lot of swing and viv to your voom, but you don't have carte blanche. You're not an autocratic ruler, even if not really a democratic one. Modest fascist, if anything. There are rules, and you do usually abide by them. It's only when you think something could stand to have a little Crocker flair, that you go off orders. This isn't really the kind of situation where you could think about doing that.

"Terms can be manoeuvred," tiny chainsaw girl chirps merrily, and flicks her fins at you. No matter how adorable seeming the enemy is, never trust them. All of you had learned that lesson after Epsilon Kappa Kappa Beta Forty-Six, and those. Rather adorable fuzzy things, that had then basically eaten a ship. Apparently, Ekkabefortytwo's native wildlife really, _really_ enjoyed eating both electricity and anything metal. You'd lost some several hundred crew to that exercise. Never again. "We - no, I - am most eager to engage in cahoots with whofa! I think our species will engage most comradiously, once elements are settled."

Whofa...oh. Hu-fa. Human Federated Alliance. You raise an eyebrow, not willing to turn her away, really. From what you've found out, she's the leader of the rebellion. If she wins, it's a new government, it's a new everything. And you'll be in on the ground floor. Could be profitable. Could be...useful. If you can get the right people in the right places.

"One of ours needs to be close to you," you say firmly, and your grin gets wider. Bartering, haggling - _diplomacy_ \- it isn't something you really get. You're not quite as bad as Jake, who would usually rather descend into a situation with guns blazing (or more likely, simply trip over it yet somehow still come out fresh as a daisy and smelling like a rose while trailing bemused and adoring aliens in his wake) and you aren't as reticent as a Lalonde or a Strider. Well. Dirk and Rose, at least, Roxy being rather outgoing to say the least and Dave at least willing to talk to people. But you've managed to cobble together at least a semblance of know how and know _who_. You are trying to think of who would be the best person to put in this situation, just throw them right in there. Needs to be someone personable, at least. And able to make hard decisions. Take the shot. You...oh. _Jade_. Of course. No one ever expects the Harley-Englishes to really be capable of the things they could do in a pinch - it's almost, but not quite the same as the effect that follows Crocker-Egberts around. Perfect. As long as Jade agrees, of course, but you think she will. She's even less of a fan of politics than you, but she does like to be useful. And some sort of political marriage with the Alternian Empire, would make her _very_ useful. You know she can take care of herself, no matter what, and you're sure she'll agree. There's just not anyone else outside your...special little group that you'd trust, so Jade it must be. "Quite close."

"But you accept?"

The fish-girl is pressing you for answers, and you think you can hear an undercurrent of growling demand in that. Desperation. You can work with that, you can _use_ that. You think you can make her agree to a lot of things and you grin, flash your buck-toothed smile at her and extend your hand. She stares at it like it's going to bite her. You're not planning on it; you're not really that type of girl. At least not with people and entities you don't know well, hoo hoo!

"As far as we agree on a few quid pro quos, a few provisos - but once we get all the paperwork sorted out," you purr, and wriggle your fingers at her. Holding it out for a handshake as the two trolls continue to stare at you like you're mad. If they're going to be your allies, they'll get the hang of it soon enough, you're sure. There is always method to your madness, even if you mostly drive by the feel of your gut. It's never really steered you wrong. "We'll want some concessions. Trade agreements, things like that that the paperpushers can sort out. And you _have_ to take one of our people into some personal, important relationship with you personally - but yes." You cough slightly. "You put your hand out and take mine, it's called a handshake and it's a traditional Terran gesture of good will."

"Yes? We value other's traditions, so," she says cautiously, and you can feel your grin hitch up higher at the sides. This is going to work, it's going to be _fun!_ Sometimes you just enjoy the feeling of winning. Her hand meets yours, cool and rough around your fingers as you shake hands on it and Rose sighs in your ear. You don't know whether you've done the right thing, exactly, but you think you have. What else could you have done? The Alternians might be a bit of alright, if you can buckle down and enjoy the ride. "We agree, as long as writing of terms agrees with our needs and desires enough."

"So cahoots it is," you chuckle, and her hand grips yours harder. She bares her fangs at you and you really are reminded just how good a set of chompers trolls could own, and you grin back wider. If she thinks she's going to eat you up once she's done and cemented in her role as Empress, she'll have another think coming. There's nothing as weak as a nation in the aftermath of a civil war. All those energies, all those resources consumed in fighting itself. Either way, you think you're going to come out ahead on this. The trolls are less weird than some other intelligences you've discovered; maybe you can even get to be something like friends. What was there to say to a genius-level ball of floating loosely cohesive gas, after all? At least trolls have a body you can touch. You can understand the needs and possible values of an organism that needs to eat and drink, that shits and bleeds, and needs something like a community around it. Maybe not exactly, maybe not precisely - but you have the feeling of being on the edge of something new and adventurous. You want to see where it takes you.

"Cahoots," she croons, and the reverberation runs down your spine like ice as her fingers tighten even more around yours, both of you smiling at each other in almost perfect harmony.

There'll be problems, there always are problems. But. Right now, in this moment, you've made a step. And that's all anything ever is, a series of steps until the point where you fall and crumble. But maybe, this way, there'll be someone waiting to pick you up. That's the point of alliances! You don't think you've made the wrong choice. You like this Feferi Peixes, and the cut of her jib.

You think she'll make a smashing Empress.


End file.
